Dell Abandons PDA Development

Here's a bit of sour news on the PDA front, seems Dell have chosen to discontinue their PDA lineup based on decreased shipments/demands for such devices in recent times. The article goes on to say that their shipments were 33.8% lower in the first quarter of this year compared to last year, however Windows Mobile based cell phones have been shipping at an increased rate of 26% over the same time period.

For the past few years, more and more customers have been moving away from traditional PDAs to Smartphones that can do it all. Dell saw its Q1 '06 shipments of PDAs drop by nearly 34% while HP saw a 30% decrease. The overall market for PDAs has been on the decline as far back as Q2 of 2005 and shrank by 19% in Q1 '06.

DigiTimes reports that Dell has stopped its PDA development altogether and has diverted the funding to its notebook division. According to reports, Dell turned off the faucet in 2005. Dell's last all-new model was introduced in 2004 in the form of the Windows Mobile 2003 based Axim X50 series. The company then released a minor update in the form of the Axim X51 series which basically added the Windows Mobile 2005 operating system.